Baker Academic

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

#HeForShe, Sexism, and NT Scholarship—Chris Keith

Some while ago, I was one of
many people who watched with admiration as Emma Watson introduced the #HeForShe
campaign at the United Nations. If you haven't seen the video, here it is.After watching it, I couldn’t help but think
about how some of these gender issues continue to play out in the small corner
of the world that I inhabit.My initial
thought was that higher education generally and Biblical Studies specifically
could pat themselves on their backs because they have come a very, very long
way.The back-patting didn’t last too
long, however.I couldn’t get out of my
head three different experiences I’ve had.All three involve my Doktormutter, Helen
Bond at the University of Edinburgh, a brilliant scholar, fantastic PhD
supervisor, and even better human being.I’m honored that I get to continue to work with Helen as co-Chairs of
the Jesus and Gospels Seminar of the British New Testament Conference.I asked her permission to tell brief versions
of these stories and she granted it. I
also asked if she’d write a Part Two to this post, where she could speak to her
own experiences.She granted that
request, too, so consider this an appetizer to the main course that she’ll
offer tomorrow.

The first experience occurred when
I was a PhD student.I was randomly
having lunch with a senior scholar in the field who had been invited to lecture
at Edinburgh.In the course of the
conversation, he stated explicitly that Helen had used her sexuality to advance
her career.I’m 100% that this person
meant it as a compliment, that Helen had been shrewd and used everything she
could to her advantage.But it
essentially came across as a statement that Helen wouldn’t have been where she
was if she was ugly.I was shocked not
only at the statement but at the fact that he said it to her PhD student.

The second experience occurred at
the tail end of my PhD studies in a research seminar that I can only describe
as tragically majestic in every way possible.I’ve written about it before here.I mentioned in that post that Helen was
presiding over this paper and that, at one point when trying to make the case
for a sexualized reading of the woman at the well, Jesus, and the bucket of
John 4, the presenter used hand motions to explain a bucket going in and out
and looked at Helen like, “Right?”Well,
one thing I didn’t mention in that post was that—for some reason I honestly
can’t now remember and I’m not sure it would matter if I could—in the midst of
his case for his reading of John 4 and the sexual nature of the woman’s
statement that Jesus had no bucket, the presenter said:“Well, and we all know what women are like
at cocktail parties, don’t we?”When he
asked “Don’t we?” he turned and looked right at Helen for affirmation, as if
she was going to say, “Oh yes, that’s how I always am at cocktail parties, as
is every woman I know.”

The third experience occurred
several years ago in a meeting.I was
meeting with Helen and two other senior NT scholars.One of the other two was addressing Helen in
a manner that seemed overly-informal; it sure looked like flirting.At one point in time, he leaned close to her
and I instinctively thought he was going in for a kiss.He wasn’t, but that’s how close he was.Later on when I had a chance, I asked Helen
what that was all about.She told me
that this person has always acted like that toward her, including calling her
“my dear” and whatnot.I couldn’t
believe it . . .

. . . and I suppose that’s the
problem that arose freshly for me after hearing Emma Watson’s speech and
thinking about my professional world.I
had conveniently filed these away as isolated odd experiences.But these types of things are quite clearly
common for Helen.I mention it, and
write this post, however, because the real issue that I saw freshly was my
response in each situation, which was simply and embarrassingly silence, a
silence that permitted such things to continue unaddressed.

I wrote to Helen and apologized for
being part of the problem while thinking that I was not.As mentioned before, I also asked if she’d be
willing to address these issues here on the Jesus Blog.Thankfully, she said yes, and that post is
coming soon.

Chris, wow! Thanks so much for sharing these anecdotes. I must admit that I am not only shocked, I am ashamed to be part of a guild that includes some who act and think this way. Helen is an outstanding scholar and I am sorry that female scholars like her and others continue to be looked at through these types of lenses.

Thanks for blogging about this!I think the first two stories would classify as "microaggression." I find this label helpful, because it covers unintentional marginalization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression_theory)

Chris, the biggest change I've experienced in my roughly 60 year lifetime is in the social role and status of women. Granted, my slice of life is highly privileged and limited to the First World. But within this narrow slice of experience, the view of gender has been transformed beyond anything I could have imagined. An example: my Rabbi is Laura Geller. She is only a few years older than I am, and she was (I think) the third female Rabbi ordained in the United States. Today, most ordained Rabbis are women. Within Reform Judaism, I think something like 2/3 of all new Rabbis are women, and the percentage of women cantors is even higher. This is nothing short of a revolution.

Granted, positive change can never come quickly enough. Granted, the progress we have made is much less than the progress we still need to make. But we honor people like Helen Bond and Rabbi Geller by acknowledging how remarkably far we've already come.

Oh, yes. That's what happens, alright. And it is sooooo nice that we are now getting to the stage when men who behave reasonably will also name the problem, rather than women having to do it. And Peter, you're right that the specific examples that Chris cites are sexism by NT scholars, but the result has been that many women just decide that it's too hard and withdraw to places where they don't have to deal so much with the problematic treatment, which limits women's voices in the academy. We also experience situations where, for example, panels at SBL are all male, despite the fact that there are women working in the field with the same level of credibility, which also limits women's voices and limits their ability to get their work out there. And when a senior scholar treats women like amusing fluffballs or sex objects, it makes it that much harder to be taken seriously. Scripture speaks differently to women than to men because women experience the world differently to men (who do not have, for example, to deal with the kinds of things that Chris outlines above), so NT scholarship is impoverished.

...a weblog dedicated to historical Jesus research and New Testament studies

__

Search This Blog

_______

Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Books by the Jesus Bloggers

To purchase, follow these links

___

Jesus and the Last Supper

_____

Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text